My nostalgic side says 2nd ed or 1st ed (started out with Basic, red box set long ago). On the other hand, I've liked the improvements in 3.5. On the third hand, I'm a GURP-er, which 3.5 is somewhat closer to (I think it's also closer to Palladium, at least in terms of Skills).

Upsides to 3.5: removed racial class limitations and balanced races with each other; better skills system; feats; multiclassing is much better than it used to be

Well just remember that 4th Edition is D&D MMO, not the tabletop system we grew up with. Of course their multiclass system is broken.

4e's more like the D&D I grew up with than 3.x ever was. Calling 4e's multiclass system broken belies a dismaying misunderstanding of previous edition's multiclassing and what broken means as a word in the English language.

Yeah, you're probably right, but I haven't seen the system in play, and from what I've seen of the system, it just doesn't fit with what I feel is "D&D" in D&D. I might change my opinion if I had more exposure to it.

Well I run 3.0 with some of the class changes in 3.5 (bards and sorcerors) but I hate messing with the game and felt they rip people off. I can already see DnD 4.5 - give me a fucking break. 2nd Edition was around 20 years and as far as I can tell was extensively playtested far over what was done in the rules now.

I said 3.0 because I own those rules and will NOT waste my hard earned money on a whole new set of books. EVER! Fool me one shame on you fool me twice shame on me, no fooling me again.

I certainly like 3.5e too, but I'm quite fond of 4e already. It's a shame that they nerfed multiclassing, but I think the actual classes are incredibly well thought out. I love the fact that if nobody wants to play a particular core class, you have tons of alternate options. Nobody wants to be the cleric? You can be a warlord and play a fighter that subs in nicely for a cleric. Or you can play a bard, which is actually useful in 4e. Want to tank, but think fighters are boring? Sure, you can be a paladin, but you can be a paladin of any religion -- or you can be a warden instead.

The skill system works much better since they pared the skill list down (goodbye, Use Rope!) and tied improving to level gains, and the introduction of skill challenges took skill use from one of the weakest parts of the game to close to par with the tactical combat system. Also, if you don't want to bring a rogue, it costs one feat to add thievery as a cross-class skill. If you play a warlock, thievery's not even cross-class.

If you want to cast some random spell, you no longer have to waste a spell slot or sit around for a day to relearn spells. Non-combat spells are rituals now, and they don't compete with combat spells for slots. Plus, lots of classes can do ritual casting, so you can still be flexible about who is in your party.

In a lot of ways, I like freeform RP better than system RP. But given a system, it seems to me that 4e does a really good job of resolving the things that need to be resolved.

I grew on Basic and then Advanced. Spent the lion’s share of my tabletop time on 2nd Edition.

So it was when 3.0 came out, I remained unconvinced at first. Why, I asked, should I as a 2nd Edition gamer with tons of rulebooks, modules, and box sets ‘convert’ to the new 3.0?

Well, the short and correct answer is that TSR/WoTC needs to stay in business like anyone else, but the real correct answer is that 3.0 and the following 3.5 cleaned up a lot of stuff in 2nd Edition, and it added some nice angles to character development such as dividing up proficiencies and feats. It also converts fairly well from 2nd Edition, which is why 3.5 won me over and is my current campaign rule set.

But 4th Edition is where I had to get off Gary Gygax’s hijacked dungeon train. Tabletop Dungeons & Dragons influenced all the big MMO heavy hitters including EverQuest and World of Warcraft, so on a certain level it stands to reason the massive popularity of the MMO genre is going to influence its tabletop progenitor. However that’s not what concerns me, what does concern me is the dumb-down factor.

You see, I’ve witnessed it all before: I was a Battletech player for a number of years, and then….’Dark Age’ came upon us. ClickieTech.

Tantamount to, The Wellspring Hath Run Dry.

As in, we’ve run out of ideas, as a company, for this game setting. So it’s time to erase the blackboard and then burn down the school we had it in, because the next generation of students aren’t measuring up either.

Funny, because all us gamers never really seemed to run out of ideas to expand their source material beyond the point where they got it…maybe they’re hiring the wrong people.

As in, we need to follow popular media and dumb down considerably. Hell, even the fucking schools do it today; some are considering lowering the testing standards so more dumb kids can slip through with good grades.

Those of us in the ‘veteran gamer’ category, who grew up before net gaming got big and started with dice, those of us that were not born in the fetal position curled about a Blackberry, who integrated into the technology and were not born with it, but yet made the transition the best.

Those of us in the ‘veteran gamer’ category, who grew up before net gaming got big and started with dice, those of us that were not born in the fetal position curled about a Blackberry, who integrated into the technology and were not born with it, but yet made the transition the best.

I got the red box in '81 or '82. Does that qualify me to have an opinion?

My half-copper. I started with 3.0 D&D, and had never heard of it before that, besides vague mentions. I loved 3.5, when it came out, and have been playing it ever since. I tried 2e, and hated it with a burning passion. Bloody THAC0, and everything else. 4e is a decent system and such in it's own right, but I do not see it as D&D, but the way it is flavored and built. It is a solid system, but I don't like it. I prefer complexity in my game, and 4e does not have it.

Instead I'm turning to the Pathfinder RPG, under Paizo. It has the feel I am looking for, and sadly 4e doesn't have it. I do not know about other people, but that is how I feel.

My half-copper. I started with 3.0 D&D, and had never heard of it before that, besides vague mentions. I loved 3.5, when it came out, and have been playing it ever since. I tried 2e, and hated it with a burning passion. Bloody THAC0, and everything else. 4e is a decent system and such in it's own right, but I do not see it as D&D, but the way it is flavored and built. It is a solid system, but I don't like it. I prefer complexity in my game, and 4e does not have it.

Instead I'm turning to the Pathfinder RPG, under Paizo. It has the feel I am looking for, and sadly 4e doesn't have it. I do not know about other people, but that is how I feel.

Oh 4.0 is a completely functional ruleset, but like I said there is a certain level of complexity that tabletop established for itself, and the 'new editions' of them don't cut the same intellectual edge.

Streamlining is one thing; when Dark Age launched it dispensed with the Battletech mech sheets for incremental damage on the clicky-bases. Yeah it sped up combat turns, but at the price of turning chess into Chutes and Ladders.

I think the one big effect of the OOM is that all combat occurs in real time, as opposed to turn-based tabletop where it can take a while to resolve a single turn of actions and combat. I think the real time environment may have pushed people more toward real time events and away from the game turn.

There's where newer players that haven't touched the older stuff fail; they don't have the same breadth of temporal scaling as the more rounded gamers. That's probably a nicer way of saying they don't have the attention span, and/or grasp to go turn based. Having played on both fields, I can say that reacting instinctively versus planning strategically are at once sides of the same coin, but also apples and oranges.

The system is simple, and it is improbable that you could make a character which is not survivable even at first level. However, most people who discuss it in gaming forums use specifically optimized builds - this race does best at this class with these power choices and these feats. That race does best using this power choice modified by these feats and these abilities taken from this class using multiclass feats. This combination of powers from this class used by this race works best for this set of tactics.

It is an easy to learn system that is balanced....but it is designed for people with a short attention span, who don't mind taking the easy way out to build a character, or who like to hyper-optimize characters to ridiculous levels. They limit character growth in one specific way - once you reach this specific level, you are forced to retire the character- there is nothing more for him to learn or do. It is a demigod, ancient lich, ultimate champion, or living spell by that time, but it's still The End. And I find that annoying. It's so regulated and planned out, that they even advertise you can run adventures by yourself or with one other person, and you don't even need a dungeonmaster!

That's not roleplaying, last I checked.

However....it is appealing to new players, and it has the potential for fun. But it limits growth and development of the character in certain ways. You have the potential to make your character more like what you want him to be....within certain inescapable limitations.

3.5 was unbalanced. This is common knowledge. But it allowed for unparalleled character development in any direction the player saw fit (and a large number that gave the DM fits). The unbalance issues were largely solved in Pathfinder; Monks and Bards became viable character classes, while the most game breaking aspects of Clerics and Druids were fixed, while making Fighters the killing machines they were supposed to be. If Splatbooks (supplements) are allowed, the spellcasters could still be broken, but a DM who knows what is broken can avoid that by not allowing certain specific spells easily enough.

But the biggest, most important thing about 3.5/Pathfinder compared to 4e is this: infinite growth. You can, if you so desire, create 100th level characters. You can create gestalt characters, which take two classes and combine them in every beneficial way. You can play monsters and give them class levels (potentially gamebreaking, but not if that's what everyone wants to do!). You can, if you feel the urge, take a single level in every single class there is. You won't be very effective at too much, but it might be amusing. This is my main problem with 4e. That and they subscribed to the White Wolf methodology of "all the books are core, so you really do need all of them to play effectively" (which is another issue entirely and has no real place here).

My preference? 3.5 or Pathfinder aka 3.75. The versatility is unmatched by most other games with the exception of GURPS.